Plastic Frictions

Plastic is a seemingly ubiquitous material, and as such is often taken for granted. However plastic is central to the systems that define contemporary globality. From the circulation of food and goods, to electronics and telecommunications, to building materials and medical technologies, it could be argued that we have entered the Age of Plastic. Emerging from the ingenuity of chemical engineering, plastic has a longer history in the arts as it describes the ability to form and mould matter. It is a material that is mundane and awesome, deadly and life enhancing, what Anna Tsing calls a ‘friction’. This friction emerges from plastic’s contradictory nature, at once endlessly pliable and incredibly persistent. This symposium will be dedicated to thinking through the aesthetic, political, economic, and philosophic entwinements of plastic.

3:45-5:45 pm: Brian BlackProfessor of History and Environmental Studies, Penn StateA "Burping Bowl” in Every Cupboard: Tupperware and the Construction of the American Ecology of Oil

Jennifer Wagner-LawlorAssociate Professor of English and Women’s Studies, Penn State Where is “Away”? Mapping Plastic Pollution